Mapping the Human Brain: A Science Fiction Short Story, part 1

in #steemstem6 years ago (edited)

Mapping the Human Brain

Part 1

Louis Bergeron drank pickle juice to cure the hangover, but it didn’t matter because he knew he had his Ph. D. already. Standing in his boxer briefs in half an inch of dirt on his kitchen floor, he cursed his least favorite of alcohol’s many side effects: the diuretic consequence of the pituitary gland’s vasopressin suppression. He knocked over a bowl reaching for a strawberry Poptart only to find the box empty, but it didn’t matter because he knew he had his Ph.D. already. Craving the sugar, a feeling he knew originated in his Agouti-peptide expressing neurons in the hypothalamus, he pulled out his fridge’s sole remaining content, a single serve Chobani honey-flavored Greek yogurt. He cut himself trying to eat and shave at the same time, chewing spoonfuls his non-razing hand raised, but it didn’t matter because he knew he had his Ph.D. already. Without looking at the clock, Louis could tell he was on track to miss his usual 237 bus, an effect made possible thanks to the timekeeping suprachiasmatic nucleus proximate to the thalamus. He put his jacket on backwards, running out the door, but it didn’t matter because he knew he had his Ph.D. already.

He would need to hail a cab, and he was too afraid to consciously calculate the expected holdup of between eight and twelve extra minutes, leaving the task again to his subconscious suprachiasmatic nucleus.

As he reached his arm out, Louis thought about the similar countless human error induced twists of fate that had led him here. Wet tissues and tears disqualifying him from a grade school science fair, a tennis ball’s perplexing motions in his toy wagon, a steroid treatment for his mother’s autoimmune disorder and the accompanying mood swings and rages, the wonder that simple chemicals in drugs and medicine could drive personality change to the point of nonrecognition, the double helix of DNA and all the mysteries and unknowns that come with knowing its structure: these were the contributive sounds and images of Louis’ upbringing.

little red wagon.png

      A tennis ball's perplexing motions in his toy wagon

He found a cab earlier than expected, driving the still-unconscious estimated delay down to six minutes only.

In the backseat of the cab, Louis slowly realized that today was the farthest and highest point in his planned trajectory. He was not used to the idea of total freedom to choose life’s next step, with no more hoops to jump through, and the feeling in this moment scared him. He had been sticking to a beaten path, the path of least resistance, for his entire life. Instead of making choices, Louis had been living a passive man’s shadow game of autonomy: drifting along from experience to experience, continuing the experience and the abstract trend of that experience if it was positive in the present moment, discontinuing if negative. He stayed with a thought or an idea for as long as it interested him, with no attention to the future or what he would do when the line of thinking had run its course. For instance, he had liked science, biology, in high school, so he continued in that line in college. And he had liked the academy, so he entered a Ph.D. program. The current trend would suggest professorship and more research, but that didn’t feel right for some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He wondered if he’d eventually have answers to how he worked, what went on behind the eyes.

They had reached their destination, and Louis sprinted from the backseat to the building opposite, stumbling heaving into the fourth door on the left of the building’s third floor. He looked up to a table of three familiar old faces, Drs. Kenningston, Dowler, and Pridaparthi. Dr. Dowler sat in the middle chair, bigger than the two identically-sized chairs beside it, and bigger still compared to the empty seat facing them across the table.

The tall-chaired man spoke. “We’ll excuse your lack of promptness only for a stellar defense, Louis.” Both of them smiled. “Why don’t you begin?” Louis promised not to disappoint as he turned on the 3-D projector at the center of the table. He inserted a memory drive with a ridiculously high storage capacity, displaying immediately the title of his talk: In Vivo Complete Connectomic Mapping in Humans.

-------------------------

Ebb and flow, ebb and flow. They could see the constant ebb and flow everywhere in the 3-D brain.

maxresdefault.jpg

The dopaminergic neurons, largely clustered in the basal ganglia, appeared tinted blue. The blue was an effect of the post-recording integrative animation; the 244 atom machine tagged the presence of dopamine, sensing the neuromodulator based on its protonated nitrogen atom, and immediately disseminated the data to a sac-a-dos computer. Dopamine was blue because its influence on movement reminded Louis of water. Like water’s ability to stand still in puddles and pools, flow dangerously down white rapids or rivers, or amass unperturbed in ice piles and glaciers, dopamine could make people stand still or shake uncontrollably. The projections from the basal ganglia, where the molecule was released, also appeared blue, albeit to a lesser degree than the source of its projection. Whenever a vesicle released dopamine, a tiny blue dot appeared on the holographic display; the vesicles were a dripping faucet, the source a running stream.

Even More Running Water 250.jpg

    the source a running stream

Louis zoomed in on one of the dots released in the direct pathway of the basal ganglia, the simple three-organ circuit responsible for activating all motivated movement. The dopamine came in steady streams, constantly, from the Globus Pallidus and the Substantia Nigra, and then more rapidly when the person decided to play tennis or go for a walk. The patterns became clearer and clearer when Louis sped up the recording.

He was motivated to move his middle three fingers to zoom in and see the Subtantia Nigra’s great pool of blue in more detail. He was motivated to leave his left hand stationary and slide his right hand’s fingers to rotate the display and see the dopaminergic organ from all sides. He was motivated to vibrate his throat and move his tongue, motivated to tell the committee his amazement and awe first seeing the push and pull of control at its fulcrum here in the brain, motivated to keep talking and finish the presentation, motivated to push past the overwhelming feelings of bewilderment once awarded his advanced degree, motivated to stare into the abyss of the unknown future ahead of him.

Louis gave into an impulse to move onto the next part early, as he had said everything he wanted to about dopamine. The impulse realized itself when the Raphe nuclei appeared on the projection, along with all the red flashes of serotonin flowing in and around it. He suppressed an impulse to ask for a smoke break and feel the sweet calm of nicotine hitting its nACh receptors. He suppressed an impulse to jump on the table and throw things. He gave into an impulse to make a bad joke he had thrown out three drafts earlier, calling serotonin the cause of every bad decision he’s ever made. The joke did not land, and he flirted with an impulse to explain it, to talk about serotonin’s role in impulse control, and then he remembered who his audience was. The ebb and flow of the serotonin system astounded him because of its wide swath of implications to human personality. Too little, and people act aggressively or suffer from mood or thought disorders, which can both be thought of as impulse disorders: Acting impulsively can lead to aggression, and impulsive thinking can make people fall into habitual or obsessive thought patterns. Too much serotonin leads to muscle rigidity, fevers, and seizures. It’s a miracle that the healthy brain can keep itself at just the right balance.

93fd91da05c0ba65e93b3c42f3ae4a44.jpg

   He suppressed an impulse to jump on the table and throw things. 

A simple beauty just out of his reach, some natural balance based around symmetry, in both the brain and the universe. The brain and the universe, the two frontiers he had made it his mission to explore. For now he was content unlocking the secrets of the brain. The universe could wait. The brain, its own kind of universe, the combinatorial connections between neurons outnumbering the number of atoms in the universe. It is said that the brain is the universe perceiving itself, and now the perceiving subject became the object, the perception-device now directed inwards and perceiving itself.

He had his finger on the pulse of the answer, the map ascribing not just the position of each atom in this universe (neuron) but also how and when each interacted with the others. Through exploring the very small, Louis hoped that his research on the brain would have far-reaching consequences at the macro scale. Perhaps by learning more about the structure of the brain, astronomers could draw better models of the biggest things in the universe like galaxies and galaxy systems. Louis remembered all of the general abstractions made from studying big and thinking small, from the nature of motion and gravity to calculus and nuclear fission, which were all largely stimulated by astronomical studies. If he was right, this would be one of the first opposite cases, studying small and thinking big.

550b0c969722688aa9c6e8a4c6272ae9--quantum-mechanics-crazy-facts.jpg

Louis remembered all of the general abstractions made by studying big 
and thinking small

......

Here's part 2!

If you'd like to read more, here's a short flash fiction piece I wrote, and here's a piece I wrote from the perspective of an omniscient, omnipotent being.

Follow me for more creative writing! Thanks :)

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Awesome! Thanks for the shoutout :)

Wow this is pretty ambitious. So did he successfully defend?

Really fun writing here and enjoyed the "science-y" bits :)

Much love - Carl "Totally Not A Bot" Gnash




@carlgnash from the @humanbot Human Certified Original Works Initiative has manually determined this post to be the original and truly creative work of the post author.

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Thanks for being an original and creative content creator! You rock!

I'm glad that you like it! There's still a few parts left to come, so we'll see if he defends it successfully ;)

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